Workers' comp bill gets House approval

By Jim Davenport

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA - The House gave key approval Wednesday to a bill that overhauls South Carolina's workers' compensation laws.

Supporters acknowledged rates may not decline, but they said the proposed changes will stabilize the system that pays medical bills and partial wages for people hurt on the job.

The bill won second reading with a 92-16 vote after a daylong debate. But the legislation's future is far from certain in the Senate, where key legislators say they won't curb worker benefits.

The Senate calendar is full, and with the time remaining in the session short, it's likely the bill will run out of time, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell said.

"I think for us to do a comprehensive review of it, we will be hard-pressed this year," said McConnell, R-Charleston.

The changes heading to the Senate on Thursday will bring "a more efficient system," House Labor, Commerce and Industry Chairman Harry Cato, R-Travelers Rest, said. "It's not a miracle cure."

Rep. Converse Chellis, R-Summerville, said employers are having fewer accidents but are seeing huge increases in the cost of workers' compensation insurance. "You're telling me we don't have a crisis? It's increasing. We got to do something about it," he said.

Chellis said the fault lies with the South Carolina Second Injury Fund, a program that helps shield employers from the cost of hiring people with disabilities or previous workplace injuries. A $253 million assessment by that program last year is propelling much of this year's debate.

Chellis blamed that problem on lawyers.

"I'm going to tell you, the lawyers got smarter," he said. "They started working the fund, they understood how to work the fund, and when they worked the fund," payments increased, he said.

The bill scales the Second Injury Fund back to handle only the most severe types of injuries and disabilities. If the losses - $253 million was assessed last year - don't fall to $8 million by 2012, the program would be eliminated.

Much of Wednesday's debate involved two issues central to the overhaul effort: limits on payments for injuries that occur over a long period of time and using American Medical Association physical impairment guidelines as a factor in determining disability awards.

Both were approved on close votes.

Rep. Joe Neal, D-Hopkins, said using AMA guidelines was an attempt to make sure workers "have as tough a time as possible getting a fair shake from their employer and the state when they are hurt on the job."

The guidelines, opponents said, treat all humans in their daily activities the same. However, workers' compensation disability awards are based substantially on the type of work a person does. For instance, a bricklayer's or concert pianist's hands are more vital to their work than a lawyer's hands, they said.

Neal said putting the guidelines into the law would amount to shutting "down fairness and justice for working people in South Carolina."

Several efforts to tie disability payments entirely to AMA guidelines failed.

In the end, Neal voted for the legislation. "They took out a lot of things that should have been taken out," Neal said. It will be up the Senate, he said, to "clean it up even more - or kill it."

While they passed the bill, the House wants to change who controls electing Workers' Compensation Commission members. Current law gives that responsibility to the Senate's 46 members. But the House wants their 124 members to jointly vote on those commissioners with the Senate and keep the governor's office from choosing any commissioners.

"That's got about as much chance of surviving here as an ice cube does on a sidewalk in July," McConnell said. "It's just going to evaporate in here."

McConnell, who also is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says larger concerns that loom over workers' compensation law changes will play out in subcommittee hearings he's scheduled beginning Thursday.

For one thing, there's little support for the idea that workers injured over a long time at work are a problem that needs to be addressed, McConnell said.